LeVar Burton

Ever since Reading Rainbow went off the air in 2006, LeVar Burton has been working to bring it back. In 2012, he launched a tablet app program, and just recently, he launched a Kickstarter campaign asking for $1 million to develop Reading Rainbow programming across all platforms, which will be provided to classrooms for free.
Flash forward to today, and the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter… Read More

We all know that LeVar Burton has famously played a space traveler in the hugely successful Star Trek: The Next Generation series, but nowadays he is spreading the word that human travel beyond our solar system may actually become a near-term reality for people who aren’t actors — or even astronauts.
As a member of the advisory council of the 100 Year Starship project, Burton is… Read More

Back in 2009, NPR ran a story titled “‘Reading Rainbow’ Reaches Its Final Chapter.” At the time, that probably seemed like a reasonable headline — after all, after 26 years, the beloved TV show was going off the air, the victim of changing government funding priorities. But it looks like there’s actually a lot more to the Reading Rainbow story, and its… Read More

While we nerds may best remember LeVar Burton as a VISOR-clad Starfleet officer, he also spent much of the 80s and 90s instilling in children an appreciation for reading. In fact, Burton is still stuck to the idea of encouraging childhood literacy — he launched a new company called RRKidz this past September that’s currently working on (among other things) a… Read More